Use of PCR to identify Leptospira in kidneys of big brown bats (Eptesicus fuscus) in Kansas and Nebraska, USA

Bats have been implicated as potential carriers of Leptospira as a result of surveys, mostly in Australia and South America. We measured the prevalence of pathogenic leptospires in kidneys of bats from Kansas and Nebraska. From 7 August 2012 to 21 August 2012, we extracted DNA from kidneys of 98 big brown bats (Eptesicus fuscus) submitted and found negative for rabies. The DNA was processed in a two-step, seminested PCR assay with a dual-labeled Taqman probe specific for pathogenic leptospires. As a negative control, we used a saprophytic leptospire (Leptospira biflexa Patoc) and, as a pathogenic control, Leptospira interrogans Canicola. All bat kidneys were negative for pathogenic leptospires, suggesting that it is unlikely that the big brown bat, one of the most prevalent bat species in North America, is a reservoir for transmission of leptospires to dogs or humans

Object lessons: the question of cultural property in the age of repatriation

Object lessons: the question of cultural property in the age of repatriation. Northwest Coast material culture has become increasingly identified as cultural property, a quasi-legal concept that denotes objects of a collective patrimony. This represents a radical shift from earlier notions of property, seen strongly as privately owned by individuals and family groups. Moreover, the status of these objects as art, that is, framed in a museum setting and partaking of certain transcendent qualities derived from the Western tradition, represents a dramatic redefinition of pieces that were considered analogous to human beings, as temporary entities. This process of redefinition, which is generational, political, and an invention of tradition, is probably inevitable.Leçons d’objets: la question de la propriété culturelle au temps du rapatriement. La culture matérielle de la Côte nord-ouest est de plus en plus conçue comme une propriété culturelle, un concept quasi légal qui identifie les objets comme éléments d’un patrimoine collectif. Il s’agit là d’une modification radicale par rapport aux conceptions anciennes de la propriété: celle-ci était fortement ancrée dans la possession privée par des individus et des groupes familiaux. Par ailleurs, l’accession de ces mêmes objets au statut d’œuvres d’art, par leur inscription dans les musées et l’affectation qui leur est faite, sur le mode occidental, d’une valeur transcendante, redéfinit complètement leur nature puisque, jusqu’alors, ils étaient considérés, à l’instar des êtres humains, comme des entités passagères. Ce processus de redéfinition, qui est dans l’air du temps, a une dimension politique et représente l’invention d’une tradition, est probablement inévitable.Lección de los objetos: el problema de la propiedad cultural en el tiempo de la rapatriación. La cultura material de la costa del Noroeste aparece más y más como una propiedad cultural, un concepto casi legal que se aplica a objetos formando un patrimonio colectivo. Eso representa un cambio radical respecto a las antiguas nociones de propiedad, las cuales remitían a la posesión privada por parte de individuos y grupos de familia. Aparte de eso, la adquisición por estos objetos del estatuto de obras de arte, ya que se exponen en museos y se les reconoce, al modo occidental, un valor transcendental, modifica su naturaleza misma: en efecto, antes eran considerados, al igual que los hombres, como entidades temporarias

A spatial judgement task to determine background emotional state in laboratory rats (Rattus norvegicus)

Humans experiencing different background emotional states display contrasting cognitive (e.g. judgement) biases when responding to ambiguous stimuli. We have proposed that such biases may be used as indicators of animal emotional state. Here, we use a spatial judgement task, in which animals are trained to expect food in one location and not another, to determine whether rats in relatively positive or negative emotional states respond differently to ambiguous stimuli of intermediate spatial location. We housed 24 rats with environmental enrichment for seven weeks. Enrichment was removed for half the animals prior to the start of training (‘U’: unenriched) to induce a relatively negative emotional state, whilst being left in place for the remaining rats (‘E’: enriched). After six training days, the rats successfully discriminated between the rewarded and unrewarded locations in terms of an increased latency to arrive at the unrewarded location, with no housing treatment difference. The subjects then received three days of testing in which three ambiguous ‘probe’ locations, intermediate between the rewarded and unrewarded locations, were introduced. There was no difference between the treatments in the rats’ judgement of two out of the three probe locations, the exception being when the ambiguous probe was positioned closest to the unrewarded location. This result suggests that rats housed without enrichment, and in an assumed relatively negative emotional state, respond differently to an ambiguous stimulus compared to rats housed with enrichment, providing evidence that cognitive biases may be used to assess animal emotional state in a spatial judgement task

High operational and environmental stability of high-mobility conjugated polymer field-effect transistors through the use of molecular additives.

Due to their low-temperature processing properties and inherent mechanical flexibility, conjugated polymer field-effect transistors (FETs) are promising candidates for enabling flexible electronic circuits and displays. Much progress has been made on materials performance; however, there remain significant concerns about operational and environmental stability, particularly in the context of applications that require a very high level of threshold voltage stability, such as active-matrix addressing of organic light-emitting diode displays. Here, we investigate the physical mechanisms behind operational and environmental degradation of high-mobility, p-type polymer FETs and demonstrate an effective route to improve device stability. We show that water incorporated in nanometre-sized voids within the polymer microstructure is the key factor in charge trapping and device degradation. By inserting molecular additives that displace water from these voids, it is possible to increase the stability as well as uniformity to a high level sufficient for demanding industrial applications.We gratefully acknowledge financial support from Innovate UK (PORSCHED project) and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council though a Programme Grant (EP/M005141/1). I.N. acknowledges studentship support from FlexEnable Ltd. K.B. gratefully acknowledges financial support from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (BR 4869/1-1). B.R., M.K.R., and J.L.B. thank the financial support from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), the KAUST Competitive Research Grant program, and the Office of Naval Research Global (Award N62909-15-1-2003 );This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Nature Publishing Group via https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat478

A Novel Pipeline for Adrenal Gland Segmentation: Integration of A Hybrid Post-Processing Technique with Deep Learning

Accurate segmentation of adrenal glands from CT images is essential for enhancing computer-aided diagnosis and surgical planning. However, the small size, irregular shape, and proximity to surrounding tissues make this task highly challenging. This study introduces a novel pipeline that significantly improves the segmentation of left and right adrenal glands by integrating advanced pre-processing techniques and a robust post-processing framework. Utilising a 2D UNet architecture with various backbones (VGG16, ResNet34, InceptionV3), the pipeline leverages test-time augmentation (TTA) and targeted removal of unconnected regions to enhance accuracy and robustness. Our results demonstrate a substantial improvement, with a 38% increase in the Dice similarity coefficient for the left adrenal gland and an 11% increase for the right adrenal gland on the AMOS dataset, achieved by the InceptionV3 model. Additionally, the pipeline significantly reduces false positives, underscoring its potential for clinical applications and its superiority over existing methods. These advancements make our approach a crucial contribution to the field of medical image segmentation

Pathogenic copy number variants and SCN1A mutations in patients with intellectual disability and childhood-onset epilepsy

Background Copy number variants (CNVs) have been linked to neurodevelopmental disorders such as intellectual disability (ID), autism, epilepsy and psychiatric disease. There are few studies of CNVs in patients with both ID and epilepsy. Methods We evaluated the range of rare CNVs found in 80 Welsh patients with ID or developmental delay (DD), and childhood-onset epilepsy. We performed molecular cytogenetic testing by single nucleotide polymorphism array or microarray-based comparative genome hybridisation. Results 8.8 % (7/80) of the patients had at least one rare CNVs that was considered to be pathogenic or likely pathogenic. The CNVs involved known disease genes (EHMT1, MBD5 and SCN1A) and imbalances in genomic regions associated with neurodevelopmental disorders (16p11.2, 16p13.11 and 2q13). Prompted by the observation of two deletions disrupting SCN1A we undertook further testing of this gene in selected patients. This led to the identification of four pathogenic SCN1A mutations in our cohort. Conclusions We identified five rare de novo deletions and confirmed the clinical utility of array analysis in patients with ID/DD and childhood-onset epilepsy. This report adds to our clinical understanding of these rare genomic disorders and highlights SCN1A mutations as a cause of ID and epilepsy, which can easily be overlooked in adults